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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Vanessa Bell: A Pioneer of Modern Art

Vanessa Bell, A Conversation, 1913–16.

May 25 – Oct 6, 2024
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, United Kingdom

When the widowed father of Vanessa and Virginia Stephens died in 1904, the house at 22 Hyde Park Gate was sold and the Stephens family moved to Bloomsbury, where life became more bohemian. They began organizing meetings with artists and intellectuals—Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry—at their house in Gordon Square, and the group became known as the Bloomsbury Group. Virginia would marry Woolf and go on to become an acclaimed novelist. Vanessa married the art critic Clive Bell, and was a painter. Rejecting Victorian narrative imagery, she instead created distinctly modernist works with vibrant color palettes and an urge toward abstraction. This small exhibition zooms in on Bell’s innovations. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: © Estate of Vanessa Bell/DACS